John George Nicolay

John George Nicolay (26 February 1832-26 September 1901) was the private secretary of President Abraham Lincoln.

Biography
Johann Georg Nicolai was born in Essingen, Bavaria in 1832, and his family immigrated to the United States in 1838, settling in Cincinnati, Ohio. Nicolay became a newspaper editor before becoming an assistant to the secretary of state of Illinois, and it was in this position that he met Abraham Lincoln. In 1861, in the first official act of his presidential administration, Lincoln appointed Nicolay as his private secretary. Shortly before his assassination, Lincoln appointed Nicolay to a diplomatic position in France, serving as consul in Paris from 1865 to 1869. From 1890 to 1894, Nicolay and Lincoln's military secretary John Hay published a ten-volume biography of Lincoln. Nicolay died in 1901.